Dominance Under Scrutiny: Market Concentration, Operational Crises And The Expanding Frontier Of Section 4 In Indian Aviation Competition Law
Sharadindu Shekhar, LL.M. (Corporate and Commercial Laws), 2025-26, Chanakya National Law University, Patna
ABSTRACT
The Indian aviation sector stands at a critical juncture where market consolidation and operational fragility converge to test the boundaries of competition-law enforcement. Two forces have recast the domestic market into a rigid near-duopoly: the Tata Group’s inorganic expansion, culminating in the Competition Commission of India’s approval of the Air India–Vistara combination, and the sustained dominance of InterGlobe Aviation Limited (IndiGo), which now carries well over three-fifths of domestic passengers. That structure was brutally tested in December 2025, when IndiGo’s failure to adapt crew rostering to revised Flight Duty Time Limitation norms produced a system- wide capacity shock, mass cancellations and a sharp fare spike. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation responded with a record safety penalty; the Commission, in Kartikeya Rawal v. InterGlobe Aviation Ltd., found a prima facie case of abuse of dominance and directed a full investigation. This article surveys the current practice of Indian merger review and abuse-of-dominance enforcement in aviation, identifies four structural lacunae route-atomised merger analysis, the absence of a collective-dominance doctrine, grandfathered slot allocation that privatises essential infrastructure, and unresolved CCI– DGCA jurisdictional friction and offers a reconstructive reading of Section 4 of the Competition Act, 2002. It argues that, after Competition Commission of India v. Schott Glass India Pvt. Ltd., systemic operational negligence by a dominant carrier can constitute actionable abuse where it restricts the provision of services and produces demonstrable consumer and competitive harm that the market cannot self-correct. The article proposes a package of reforms: resilience-sensitive combination review, slot-allocation redesign on the European new-entrant model, concurrent but bounded jurisdiction between the Commission and the aviation regulator, and a statutory special-responsibility standard for dominant firms in critical network industries.
Keywords: Competition Act, 2002; abuse of dominance; aviation law; IndiGo crisis; Air India–Vistara merger; essential facilities; airport slots; CCI–DGCA jurisdiction; Schott Glass; Flight Duty Time Limitation.
